behind the individual, the essential hidden by the accidental; and helping him to understand the possibility of change by natural means. There may be gaps and flaws in the genealogical pedigree of organic life, as drawn by Mr. Darwin and his followers; there may be or there may not be a possibility of resisting their arguments when, beginning with a group of animals, boldly called 'organisms without organs,'* such as the Bathybius Haeckelii, they advance step by step to the crown and summit of the animal kingdom, and to the primus inter primates, man. This is a point to be settled by physiologists; and if Carl Vogt may be accepted as their recognised representative and spokesman, the question would seem to be settled, at least so far as the savants of Europe are concerned. 'No one,' he says, 'at least in Europe, dares any longer to maintain the independent and complete creation of species.'t The reservation, 'at least in Europe,' is meant, as is well known, for Agassiz in America, who still holds out, and is bold enough to teach, 'that the different species of the animal kingdom furnish an unexpected proof that the whole plan of creation was maturely weighed and fixed, long before it was carried out.' Professor Haeckel, however, the fiery apostle of Darwinism in Germany, speaks more diffidently on the subject. In his last work on Kalkschwämme (p. xii.), just published, he writes: The majority, and among it some famous biologists of the first class, are still of opinion that the problem of the origin of species has only been reopened by Darwin, but by no means solved.' But, however that may be, and whatever modification Mr. Darwin's system may receive at the hands of professed physiologists, the honor of having cleared the Augean stable of endless species, of having explained many things which for merly seemed to require the interference of direct creation, by the slow action of natural causes, of having made us see the influence exercised by the individual on the family, and by the family on the in *Haeckel, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, p. 165. 'Personne, en Europe au moins, n'ose plus soutenir la création indépendante et de toutes pièces des espèces.' Quoted by Darwin, in his Descent of Man, vol. i. p. 1. See Durand, Origines, pp. 77, 78. dividual, of having given us, in fact, a few really new and fresh ideas, will always remain his own. In saying this, however, I do not wish to imply assent to Mr. Darwin's views on the development of all species; I only wish to say that, in the presence of such high authorities, one ought to refrain from expressing an opinion, and be satisfied to wait. I am old enough to remember the equally authoritative statements of the most eminent naturalists with regard to the races of man. When my own researches on language and the intellectual development of man led me to the conclusion that, if we had only sufficient time (some hundreds of thousands of years) allowed us, there would be no difficulty in giving an intelligible account of the common origin of all languages, I was met with the assurance that, even hypothetically, such a view was impossible, because the merest tyro in anatomy knew that the different races of man constituted so many species, that species were the result of independent creative acts, and that the black, brown, red, yellow, and white races could not possibly be conceived as descended from one source. Men like Prichard and Humboldt, who maintained the possibility of a common origin, were accused of being influenced by extraneous motives. I myself was charged with a superstitious belief in the Mosaic ethnology. And why? Simply because, in the Science of Language, I was a Darwinian before Darwin; simply because I had protested against scientific as strongly as against theological dogmatism; simply because I wished to see the question of the possibility of a common origin of languages treated, at least, as an open question.* And what has happened now? All the arguments about hybridity, infertility, local centres, permanent types, are swept away under the powerful broom of development, and we are told that not only the different varieties of man, but monkeys, horses, cats, and dogs, have all one, or at the utmost four progenitors; nay, that no living creature, in Europe at least, dares to affirm the independent creation of species.' Under these circumstances it seems but fair to follow the old Greek rule of abstain *See 'The Possibility of a Common Origin of Language,' in my letter to Bunsen On the Turanian Languages,' published in Bunsen's Christianity and Mankind, 1854. ing, and to wait whether in the progress of physical research the arguments of the evolutionists will really remain unanswerable and unanswered. The two points where the system of Mr. Darwin, and more particularly of his followers, seems most vulnerable to the general student, are the beginning and the end. With regard to the beginning of organic life, Mr. Darwin himself has exerHe does not, as cised a wise discretion. we saw, postulate one primordial form, nor has he ever attempted to explain the first beginnings of organic life. He is not responsible, therefore, for the theories of his disciples, who either try to bridge over the chasm between inorganic and organic bodies by mere 'Who knows?' or who fall back on scientific mythology; for to speak of self-generation is to speak mythologically. Mr. Herbert Spencer writes thus in answer to Mr. Martineau, who had dwelt on the existence of this chasm between the living and the not-living as a fatal difficulty in the way of the general doctrine of evolution: Here, again, our ignorance is employed to play the part of knowledge: the fact that we do not know distinctly how an alleged transition has taken place, is transformed into the fact that no transition has taken place.' The answer to this is clear. Why allege a transition, if we do not know anything about it? It is in alleging such a transition that we raise our ignorance to the rank of knowledge. We need not say that a transition is impossible, if impossible means inconceivable; but we ought not to say either that it is possible, unless we mean by possible no more than conceivable. Mr. Spencer then continues: Merely noting this, however, I go on to remark that scientific discovery is day by day narrowing the chasm. Not many years since it was held as certain that chemical compounds distinguished as organic could not be formed artificially. Now, more than a thousand organic compounds have been formed artificially. Chemists have discovered the art of building them up from the simpler to the more complex; and do not doubt that they will eventually produce the most complex. Moreover, the phenomena attending isomeric change give a clue to those movements which are the only indications we have of life in its In various colloidal sublowest forms. stances, including the albumenoid, isomeric change is accompanied by contraction or expansion, and consequent motion; and in such primordial types as the Protogenes of Haeckel, which do not differ in appearance from minute portions of albumen, the observed motions are comprehensible as accompanying isomeric changes caused by variations in surrounding physical actions. The probability of this interpretaon remembering the tion will be seen evidence we have, that in the higher organisms the functions are essentially effected by isomeric changes from one to another of the multitudinous forms which protein assumes.' This is, no doubt, very able pleading on the part of an advocate, but I doubt whether it would convince Mr. Spencer himself, as a judge. I see no narrowing of the chasm between inorganic and organic bodies, because certain substances, called organic, have lately been built up in the laboratory. These so-called organic substances are not living bodies, but simply the secretions of living bodies. The question was not, whether we can imitate some of the productions turned out of the laboratory of a living body, but whether we can build up a living body. Secondly, unless Mr. Spencer is prepared to maintain that life is nothing but isomeric change, the mere fact that there is an apparent similarity between the movements of the lowest of living bodies and the expansion and contraction produced in notliving substances by isomeric change, carries no weight. Even though the movements of the Protogenes Haeckelii were in appearance the same as those produced in chemical substances by isomeric change, no one knows better than Mr. Spencer, that life is not merely movement, but that it involves assimilation, oxidation, and reproduction, at least reproduction by fission. No chemist has yet produced albumen, much less a moneres; and till that is done we have as much right to protest against the hypothetical admission of a transition from no-life into life as Mr. Spencer would have to protest against the assertion that such a transition is impossible. By the frequent repetition of such words as generatio spontanea, autogony, plasmogony, Urzeugung, and all the rest, we get accustomed to the sound of these words, and at last imagine that they can be translated into thought. But the Science of Language teaches us that it is always dangerous to do violence to words. Self-generation is self-contradictory; for as long as we use generation in its original sense, it is impossible that the object of generation should be the same as the subject. Why, therefore, use the word generation? We should never venture to say that a man was his own father or his own son; and if anyone believes that the production of life is possible by means of purely mechanical combinations, a new word should be coined for his new idea. What is really intended, is a complete reformation of the two concepts of organic and inorganic substance, of lifeless and living bodies. The two are no longer to be considered as mutually exclusive, but as co-ordinate, and both subordinate to some higher concept. Life may hereafter be discovered as the result of a chemical combination of given substances; a peculiar mode of force or being, dependent on ascertainable conditions, and analogous to heat and electricity. Or it may be proved that millions of years ago the chemical state of the earth was different, and that what is impossible now in our laboratories was possible then in the primeval laboratory of nature. But, for the present, it seems to me a violation of the fundamental laws of scientific research, were we to use such an hypothesis as a real explanation of the problem of life, or were we to attempt to use autogony as a real word. The origin of life is as unknown to us as it was to Zoroaster, Moses, or Vasishtha; and Mr. Darwin shows a truly Kantian spirit in abstaining from any expression of opinion on this old riddle of the world. But while with regard to the first point, viz. the beginning of life, Mr. Darwin would seem to hold a neutral position, we shall see that with regard to the second point, viz. the development of some higher animal into man, Mr. Darwin is responsible himself. He feels convinced that, if not lineally, at all events laterally, man is the descendant of an ape. Much stress has lately been laid on this, as a kind of salve to our wounded pride, that man need not consider himself as the lineal descendant of any living kind of ape. We might, indeed, if we had any feelings of reverence for our ancestors, hope to discover their fossil bones in the tertiary strata of Southern Asia and Africa, but we need not be afraid of ever meeting them face to face, even in a South African congregation. I confess I do not see that this constitutes any real difference, nay, the statement that man is only laterally, not lineally, descended from a catarrhine ape, seems to me to rest on a complete confusion of thought. Supposing the first ancestor of all living beings to have been a Moneres, as Haeckel tells us, and that this moneres developed into an Amaba, and that the Amoeba, after passing through sixteen * more stages of animal life, amerged as a Prosimia, a half-ape, which Prosimia became a Menocerca, or tailed ape, then an Anthropoid ape, like the gorilla, then a Pithecanthropus or an ape-man, till at last the ape-man (a purely mythological being) begat a man; surely, in that case, man is the lineal descendant of an ape, though his first ancestor was the small speck of protoplasm, called a Moneres, that has not yet reached even the dignity of a cell. The admission of hundreds and thousands of intermediate links between the gorilla and man would not make the smallest difference, as long as the genealogical continuity is not broken. Even if we represented to ourselves the genealogical tree of the animal family as a real tree, sending out by gemmation leaves and branches, representing the different species of animals from the amoeba to the ape, and developing its leader into man, we should gain nothing; for if the primordial moneres is our common ancestor, all his descendants are brothers; all have, strictly speaking, some molecule of that living substance which existed in the first living individual; all are liable, therefore, to the capricious working of an unsuspected atavism. Nor do I see any necessity for softening the true aspect of Darwin's theory, or disguising its consequences. The question is not whether the belief that animals so distant as a man, a monkey, an elephant, and a humming bird, a snake, a frog, and a fish could all have sprung from the same parents is monstrous; but simply and solely, whether it is true. If it is true, we shall soon learn to digest it. Appeals to the pride or humility of man, to scientific courage or religious piety, are all equally *Haeckel, p. 578. + Ib. p. 168. Darwin, Descent, vol. i. p. 203. out of place. If it could be proved that our bodily habitat had not been created in all its perfection from the first, but had been allowed to develop for ages before it became fit to hold a human soul, should we have any right to complain? Do we complain of the injustice or indignity of our having individually to be born or to die? of our passing through the different stages of embryonic life, of our being made of dust, that is, of exactly the same chemical materials from which the bodies of animals are built up ? Fact against fact, argument against argument, that is the rule of scientific warfare, a warfare in which to confess oneself convinced or vanquished by truth is often far more honorable than victory. But while protesting against these sentimental outcries, we ought not to allow ourselves to be intimidated by scientific clamor. It seems to me a mere dogmatic assertion to say that it would be unscientific to consider the hand of a man or a monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, and the wing of a bat, as having been formed on the same ideal plan! Even if their descent from a common progenitor, together with their adaptation to diversified conditions,' were proved by irrefragable evidence, the conception of an ideal plan would remain perfectly legitimate. If this one member could be so modified as to become in course of time a wing, a flipper, a hoof, or a hand, there is nothing unscientific, nothing unphilosophical in the idea that it may from the first have been intended for these later purposes and higher developments. Not every member has become a hand; and why? Three reasons only are admissible; either because there was for the hand a germ which, under all circumstances, would have developed into a hand, and into a hand only; or because there we re outward circumstances which would have forced any member into the shape of a hand; or lastly, because there was from the beginning a correlation between that particular member and the circumstances to which it became adapted. I can understand the view of the evolutionist, who looks upon an organ as so much protoplasm, which, according to circumstances, might assume any conceivable form, and who treats all environing circumstances Descent, vol. i. p. 32. as facts requiring no explanation; but I am not prepared to say that Kant's view is unphilosophical when he says: Every change in a substance depends on its connection with and reciprocal action of other substances, and that reciprocal action cannot be explained, except through a Divine mind, as the common cause of both.** At all events the conception that all these modifications in the ascending scale of animal life are the result of natural selection, transcends the horizon of our understanding quite as much as the conception that the whole creation was foreseen at once, and that what seems to us the result of adapta tion through myriads of years, was seen as a whole from beginning to end by the wisdom and power of a creative Self. Both views are transcendent, both belong to the domain of faith; but if it were possible to measure the wonders of this universe by degrees, I confess that, to my mind, the self-evolution of a cell which contains within itself the power of becoming a man, or the admission of a protoplasm which in a given number of years would develop into a homunculus or a Shakespeare-nay, the mere formation of a nucleus which would change the moneres into an amoeba, would far exceed in marvellousness all the speculations of Plato and the wonders of Genesis. The two extremes of scientific research and mythological speculation seem sometimes on the point of meeting; and when I listen to the language of the most advanced biologists, I almost imagine I am listening to one of the most ancient hymns of the Veda, and that we shall soon have to say again: In the beginning there was the golden egg.' It is easy to understand that the Darwinian school, having brought itself to look upon the divers forms of living animals as the result of gradual development, should have considered it an act of intellectual cowardice to stop short before man. The gap between man and the higher apes is so very small, whereas the gap between the ape and the moneres is enormous. If, then, the latter could be cleared, how could we hesitate about the former? Few of those who have read Darwin or Haeckel could fail to feel the force of this appeal; and so far from 413. Zeller, Geschichte der Deutschen Philosophie, p. showing a want of courage, those who resist it require really all the force of intellectual convictions to keep them from leaping with the rest. I cannot follow Mr. Darwin because I hold that this question is not to be decided in an anatomical theatre only. There is to my mind one difficulty which Mr. Darwin has not sufficiently appreciated, and which I certainly do not feel able to remove. There is between the whole animal kingdom on one side, and man, even in his lowest state, on the other, a barrier which no animal has ever crossed, and that barrier is-Language. By no effort of the understanding, by no stretch of imagination, can I explain to myself how language could have grown out of anything which animals possess, even if we granted them millions of years for that purpose. If anything has right to the name of specific difference, it is language as we find it in man, and in man only. Even if we removed the name of specific difference from our philosophic dictionaries, I should still hold that nothing deserves the name of man except what is able to speak. If Mr. Mill* maintains that a rational elephant could not be called a man, all depends on what he means by rational. But it may certainly be said with equal, and even greater truth, that a speaking elephant or an elephantine speaker could never be called an elephant. wonder that Mr. Darwin and other philosophers belonging to his school should not feel the difficulty of language as it was felt by Professor Schleicher, who, though a Darwinian, was also one of our best students of the Science of Language. But those who know best what language is, and, still more, what it presupposes, cannot, however Darwinian they may be on other points, ignore the veto which, as yet, that science enters against the last step in Darwin's philosophy. That philosophy would not be vitiated by admitting an independent beginning for man. For if Mr. Darwin admits, in opposition to the evolutionist pur et simple, four or five progenitors for the whole of the animal kingdom, which are most likely intended for the Radiata, Mollusca, Articulata, and Vertebrata, there would be nothing radically wrong in admitting a fifth progenitor for man. As Mr. Darwin does not admit this, but declares distinctly that man has been developed from some lower animal, we may conclude that physiologically and anatomically there are no tenable arguments against this view. But if Mr. Darwin goes on to say that in a series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point where the term 'man' ought to be used, he has left the ground, peculiarly his own, where few would venture to oppose him, and he must expect to be met by those who have studied man, not only as an ape-like creature, which he undoubtedly is, but also as an un-ape-like creature, possessed of language, and of all that language implies. I can bring myself to imagine with evolutionist philosophers that that most wonderful of organs, the eye, has been developed out of a pigmentary spot, and the ear out of a particularly sore place in the skin; that, in fact, an animal without any organs of sense may in time grow into an animal with organs of sense. I say I can imagine it, and I should not feel justified in classing such a theory as utterly inconceivable. But, taking all that is called animal on one side, and man on the other, I must call it inconceivable that any known animal could ever develop language. Professor Schlei-, cher, though an enthusiastic admirer of Darwin, observed once jokingly, but not without a deep meaning, If a pig were ever to say to me, "I am a pig," it would ipso facto cease to be a pig.' This shows how strongly he felt that language was out of the reach of any animal, and the exclusive or specific property of man. I do not * Logic, i. 38. My objections to the words of Mr. Darwin, which I have just quoted, are twofold: first, as to form; secondly, as to substance. With regard to the form which Mr. Darwin has given to his argument, it need hardly be pointed out that he takes for granted in the premiss what is to be established in the conclusion. If there existed a series graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man, then, no doubt, the very fact that the graduation is insensible would preclude the possibility of fixing on any definite point where the animal ends and man begins. This, however, may be a mere slip of the pen, and might have been passed by unnoticed, if it were not that the same kind of argument occurs * I. 235. |